


Tattletale

by thegirlnamedcove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: And he refuses to pretend, Clubbing, Derek has no chill, First Meetings, M/M, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Police Officer Stiles Stilinski, Short One Shot, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 10:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12957147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlnamedcove/pseuds/thegirlnamedcove
Summary: Stiles can appreciate the attempts to rescue his poor delinquent soul and still be majorly peeved off.





	Tattletale

“How do I put this? You look like jailbait.”

Lydia steepled her fingers in front of her face in a decent impersonation of a bond villain.

“Gee, Lydia, you sure know how to stroke a guy’s ego.”

The back room of the twelfth precinct was stacked with boxes, all files borrowed or misappropriated from around the city, which made Lydia’s act a bit less intimidating. Stiles and his partner, Mark, were squeezed into two folding chairs in front of her desk, knees knocking together, and when Stiles glanced over he could see the same stern, lopsided expression that Mark wore to every fireworks call they’d ever gone on. He would act serious for exactly as long as it took to finish this meeting and get back in the squad car, and then he would start howling with laughter. Super.

“Why does the liquor board even _need_ our help? Don’t they have their own investigators?”

Lydia rolled her eyes.

“They don’t have _enough_. The bar you’ll be going to has been the subject of at least a dozen anonymous tips, including a couple who claim to be employees. We’ve seen drunk teenagers on the premises and surrounding streets. We know they’re serving bad IDs. But we can’t catch them at it and everyone they would normally send has ended up on the bartender's shit list. They called us because they need someone this jackass won’t recognize. And...” she made a sweeping gesture with her hand, “jailbait.”

Stiles ran a hand along the prickle of his clipped hair and sighed. He was regretting with all of his being the decision to revert back to the buzzcut and clean-shaven look. He’d known for awhile it made him look like an army brat, but it got him more numbers at clubs so he’d thought it was the good kind of army look. The sexy jarhead kind. This was making all that sudden attention feel a lot grosser in retrospect.

“Look, not that I don’t agree with your thoroughly hurtful assessment, Lydia,” he huffed a little, mostly to himself, “but shouldn’t you at least tell me the name of the place before we start fitting me for a wire? I’m not exactly a social outcast, I’ve spent time at my fair share of bars, and this bouncer might recognize me anyway.”

Lydia rolled her eyes.

“I would be _severely_ surprised if you’ve been to this place, not least of which because your idea of a clubbing outfit involves chuck’s and a batman t-shirt.”

Mark’s laughter was starting to force its way out of him in quiet snickers. Too much longer and he’d lose his composure completely, and it was that threat of being laughed at in front of others that ultimately got him to cave.

“Just...what’s it called?”

“Bubble and Squeak.”

 

***

 

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

The club’s adorable name didn’t communicate even half of what he found inside come the night of the sting. A lavender paint scheme and a pink crystal chandelier set the mood for the room ( _is ‘gay stereotype’ a mood?_ , Stiles wondered) and generic pop echoed throughout the room to create a strangely symphonic effect. People were dressed like it was a rave, in constant motion like a swarm, and he couldn’t plant himself anywhere for long without being swept along in the current. It was offensive and enticing at the same time, not his scene but he could see the appeal if you were looking for a certain kind of night.

The bar was set above the main floor, wrapped around three walls, and as soon as he got close enough he reached out to the ledge with both hands and hauled himself up bodily like he was getting out of a swimming pool. It was ten degrees cooler on this level and once he’d squirmed through the railing and managed to stand he felt right-footed again, for the first time since he entered. He checked his pockets: fake ID, cash, phone, badge, gum. The bartender on this end was braced against the bar, looking out over the crowd with a kind of grim determination, and Stiles plunked down into a stool a few feet down, hoping to observe before he ordered, get a better idea of how to approach.

To his right, he heard a grumbling, and then the most attractive lumberjack he’d ever seen was in his field of vision.

“Hey, kid, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Um,” Stiles squirmed, casting around for any sign of Mark in the crowd, “Drinking? Hopefully?”

The lumberjack levelled him with a flat look and then swung around away from the bar and closed a hand around his wrist. For a second Stiles just stared at it, his brain latching onto the sight of the man’s light brown skin against his own pale hand.

“Absolutely not,” he said, and then he was dragging Stiles towards the door.

“What?! But...dude! Who made you the boss?”

“Common decency.”

“What?”

He huffed, and pulled up short, letting Stiles stumble into his side before turning around.

“Look, I don’t know how much you paid the stoner at your high school for a fake ID but you look 16, _maybe_ , and there’s no way I can just ignore an actual child in this Eyes Wide Shut shit.”

“You’re here too, what does that make you?”

He grit his teeth, although his eyes flitted away to some other target across the room.

“Supportive of my sister’s horrifying bachelorette party.”

Stiles snorted, but dug around in his pockets all the same.

“Well I appreciate the concern, it’s been great for my self esteem, but I am actually legal. Here--”

As soon as his ID was out of his pocket the man snatched it, and as soon as it was in the man's hand Stiles remembered that it was the one the department gave him for the sting, riddled with obvious mistakes and bad formatting. They’d misspelled “gender”. They listed his height as “normal”. He made sure to sneeze in the picture. This was a disaster.

Lumberjack stared at it, his eyebrows bunching together tighter and tighter with every passing second and then tossed it out into the crowd and grabbed Stiles’ arm with renewed force.

“Come on, Tiny Dancer, you’re leaving.”

They made it to the door and the bouncer helds Stiles’ gaze and jerked his chin towards Derek, asking without words if he needed to intervene. A huge part of him wanted to nod yes, but he knew his night was already shot without the ID and, worst case scenario, he could still signal the unmarked car idling in the dentist’s office parking lot across the street if the lumberjack tried to actually get physical with him. He had more to lose from making a scene.

The night air felt frigid against his skin, and he shuddered against it. He might not have worn the mesh nonsense Lydia suggested, but he did pick a fancier, therefore thinner, t-shirt from his closet and skipped his usual college hoodie, both decisions he found himself regretting.

“Okay, you brought the child outside. You’ve fulfilled the terms of your boyscout badge. Now let go of my arm.”

“Uh-uh,” he says, “I’m not letting you wander downtown in the middle of the night.”

“Well then what the fuck is your--hey!” Stiles squawked when he felt a hand palm his ass and then Lumberjack pulled back with his phone in hand, grumbling something under his breath that he couldn’t make out. He held it at the end of his arm so Stiles couldn’t get within arm’s reach and pulled up the contacts list.

“Someone is giving you a ride home and, hopefully, a lecture.”

“You’ve made your fucking point, you asshole--”

But it was too late. He scrolled far enough to find “Sheriff Dad” and made a tsking noise in his throat, and then he hit call and held it to his ear. His grip on Stiles never wavered--he just knew he would get a bruise out of this--and he gave up trying to break it. Instead Stiles glanced over his shoulder towards the car with his sergeant in it, and positioned himself so his trapped arm was in full view of the windows.

“Yes, hi, this is Derek Hale,” Lumberjack said, and Stiles could hear the faint but stern timbre of his dad’s voice on the other end of the line. He smiled faintly, and focussed on catching the attention of backup.

“No, sir, everything’s fine. Your son is safe. I found him out at a club and thought you might want to know that.”

Derek smirked down at him and pulled the phone away from his ear, hitting the ‘speaker’ button just in time to hear the Sheriff’s reply.

“Uh, why would I want to know that?”

The smug look didn’t last long on Derek’s face but the smile on Stiles’ grew.

“Well, he’s your son and it’s almost midnight sir. I found him at the bar and--”

“And _what_?” the Sheriff asked, annoyance creeping into his voice, “You thought you’d tattle on him? Or brag? Does he know you’re calling me talking about his business?”

Derek blushed, and wilted a little, but pushed forward with admirable determination, “Well, yes, he--”

“Well, I doubt he gave permission for this paternalistic crap. Look, son, I don’t need to know every detail of the men my son brings home. You seem to think you’re hot shit, but until he invites you home for dinner he doesn’t agree. Now give him his phone back.”

Derek glared at the phone, indignation pouring off of him, and pulled it closer like he wanted to crawl through it to continue the fight.

“Your _kid_ is at a bar with a fake id trying to drink, and based on your name in his phone you are the Sheriff. You just let your son run around having sex with grown ass men--?”

“I don’t _let_ him do anything, he is fully capable of--”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met such a shitty excuse for--”

“You know, he has better sense than to talk to someone like you--”

“OKAY!” Stiles shouted and plucked the phone from Derek’s hands before it escalated any further and he spiked the phone against the concrete or something else drastic, “He thinks I’m a teenager, dad. Like, 16 years old sort of teenager. He won’t let me leave until my parent comes to collect me but it looks like the shouting got Mark’s attention. Loveyoucallyoulatertoexplain!”

He hung up and tucked the phone quickly into his pocket. Derek made a grab for it and he ducked back, although he wasn’t quite able to keep the smile off his face even as Derek’s scowl deepened with confusion.

Mark stepped up behind him, face still flushed from the heat inside the club, and set his jaw like he was ready for the situation to come to blows any minute. By the ruckus they’d been making it wasn’t an outlandish assumption.

“Sir, you have five seconds to unhand Officer Stilinski.”

“What?” Derek said, and swivelled his head back and forth between Stiles and Mark, although his grip did loosen a fraction, “Who’s…?”

“That wasn’t a suggestion, sir. Let go of his arm.”

He pulled away, one finger at a time, and Stiles rubbed a hand along his bicep where he would definitely have marks later. Under better circumstances he might find that kind of strength appealing, might find a lot about Derek appealing, but for right now he stepped away to stand next to Mark and dug his badge out of his front pocket to flash in Derek’s direction.

“Officer Stiles Stilinski, Lakeview PD, twelfth precinct. And, you know, good looking out, I guess.”

“I...you…” Derek blinked a few times and looked like his brain was melting down, “But you’re a _child_!”

Mark cackled at that, his tough cop front melting away, and punched Stiles in the arm.

“Yeah, Encyclopedia Brown, isn’t it past your bedtime?”

Stile squawked and hit back, slapping ineffectually at Mark’s shoulder as he hiked it up and laughed harder.

“I’ll show you bedtime you little shit! I got the goddamn message, I need to grow my stupid hair out again, _god_!”

“Good! You should!” he grinned, and shifted out of Stiles’ reach, “But since tonight’s busted maybe just go home and put on some grown up clothes again. This shit is just sad.”

Stiles sighed and dropped his hands, “Yeah, okay. Wanna come over to mine, dig out that whiskey with the scorpion in the bottle? We’re gonna get reamed by Lydia tomorrow, maybe if we start working now we’ll still be drunk when she finds us.”

Mark grimaced, but nodded along, fishing a wired comm out from inside his jacket, “Sure, just let me clue everyone else in before we go.”

Once his partner had wandered off to the relative privacy of the alley, Stiles turned back to Derek, who hadn’t moved from his spot. His eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline and his fingers were tangled in the sleeves of his henley.

“You’re an adult.”

“I’m an adult,” Stiles nodded.

“I, uh…” he swallowed hard, “I threw your ID into the crowd.”

He shrugged, “It was a fake for the sting, they can make me another one when I try again. If anything you probably made the high-schooler act more believable to that shitty bartender we’re trying to catch.”

“Look, is there...if there’s any way for me to make this up to you, I’d really like to.”

“It’s cool man. I’m glad someone is looking out for the young and the stupid.”

“You don’t look young,” he blurted out, and then pulled to pull his lips in like he thought he could unsay it with enough effort, “It’s just...out here, in the streetlights. Without the whole wide-eyed act, you don’t look as young as I thought before.”

Derek shuffled, a little awkward, and scuffed his shoes against the gravel of the parking lot, and it struck Stiles that he looked pretty young as well. Maybe not in stature, and definitely not when it came to the beard, but something about him like this, shoulders slumped and expression nervous, that made him look smaller.

“I get it, I think. Plus, I think once you got going, you kind of got tunnel vision.”

Derek huffed a laugh, but looked down at his feet and mumbled a _sorry_ in their direction.

“Tell you what,” Stiles started, fishing his phone back out and holding it out for Derek to take, “You put your number in here. Promise to stay away from this place next weekend, and take me out for coffee sometime. We’ll call it even.”

Derek jerked his gaze back up, scandalized.

“God, _no_ . What if we _like each other_ and you want to bring me to meet your dad someday?”

Stiles cackled and Derek swatted at his middle.

“I’m serious, he thinks I’m some alpha dick now, he would flay me alive!”

“Planning for the long term already, huh big guy?”

Derek swatted at him again, more playfully this time.

“I might, _possibly_ , have a thing for cops. Even when I’m not trying, apparently. I could tell you about this Marshall I dated for a few years if you--”

“I don’t. But that’s good to know. I’ll be sure to wear my uniform to coffee.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've noticed, in every fic that I wrote before watching the show (this one was 90% done sitting in my drafts for like nine months) I have a really weird idea of what the characters looked like. Basically, I gleaned their appearances from other people's fics without looking up pictures, and somehow from that I got that Stiles is a pale white dork with a buzzcut (true) and Derek is a broad bearded dark skinned lumberjack (not exactly).
> 
> It's only one line in this calling him brown, but this is like the fifth time I've noticed past me doing it, and I am so puzzled. I don't know anyone who writes Derek as non-white so where did I get that idea in my brain?
> 
> Beta'd by the_problem_with_stardust, who is very lovely.


End file.
